January 3

A Blog By Any Other Name
I have begun The Tempest, but will hold off on commenting further until I have finished.

In lieu of that, I will undergo a cultural inventory, to establish the baseline, as any scientist would in an experiment. I will also supply a brief biography, which probably should have been my numero uno posting on January 1. Mea culpa.

My name is Andy Oerman. I am 35 years old, 6-foot-six inches tall, weigh 220 pounds, and possess thinning brown hair, but am otherwise in good health. I have good vision, okay hearing, and a streaky but generally killer jump shot from anywhere inside 27 feet.

I am employed as the Supervisor of Copywriting at a prominent Midwestern insurance organization. I bought my first home four months ago in midtown Omaha. Am I single? The best answer to that would be a “yes” preceded by your favored profanity.

I grew up on a farm, am not particularly well traveled, have OCD tendencies, enjoy classical music or sports talk radio on the way to work, and sports talk radio or loud rock-and-roll music on the way home. My favorite bands are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (although their last album was a step backward, IMHO) and Flyleaf. I watch The Office, which is about the only television show ever that has survived my fandom. My favorite colors are Husker red or Dodger blue, but I really don’t think much about colors, because I’m straight.

The last book I finished was Conqueror Worms, about months of rain driving giant worms from the earth to destroy the remaining humans that weren’t already dead from the flooding. It was penned by Brian Keene, who has been called “the next Stephen King.” Who hasn’t? (I think even Richard Bachman, one of King’s noms de plume, has been called the next Stephen King.) I must say I enjoyed “CW,” although it was about as far from Shakespeare as could be.

My exposure to Shakespeare has been limited, certainly for a post-grad English major. I read Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth in high school, saw the Mel Gibson movie of Hamlet, saw 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew), and own an old vhs copy of Forbidden Planet, which follows the model of The Tempest. (I know that only from reading the Leonard Maltin entry; I wouldn’t have figured that out myself.) Right before Christmas, I watched the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a 90-minute sketch comedy routine that purports to do all of his works, but in actuality spends about 25 minutes on Hamlet. I rated it 3 stars on netflix.* Also, I never saw Shakespeare in Love, out of protest, since I think it robbed Saving Private Ryan of rightful Best Picture honors.

My point is this: I am aware of how pervasive Shakespeare’s influence is in Western culture, even if I haven’t read many of the original works.

There’s my cultural inventory, so we can accurately measure the results of my experiment later. I’m a mixture of redneck, geek and snob.

* Oh yeah, I also have a movie called Romeo and Juliet and Zombies in the Saved section of my netflix queue. Angie, the person who you have to thank (or blame) for this blog, found it for me. I can’t wait for that one. I’m sure that will be like a welcome breath of fetid air.